Scanners and multifunction printers (MFPs) with scanning functionality are used extensively by businesses and consumers. Scanners are used to generate electronic images of passive media (e.g. paper documents) by laying the media on a platen, illuminating the passive media with an illumination source (i.e., active illumination), and capturing an image of the passive media with a capture device. Active illumination is typically off the optical axes. However, because passive media diffusely reflects light, the passive media can be imaged back into the capture device with adequate illumination, resulting in a quality output.
Many hardware devices, including mobile hardware devices (e.g., smart phones, tablets, e-readers, etc.), include display screens that operate using an actively lit medium (ALM) (e.g., a backlit liquid crystal display (LCD)). An ALM, unlike passive media, is generally not diffusively reflective. Further, the light emitted by an ALM is less bright than the light reflected by passive media subject to active illumination. Accordingly, images acquired by scanning such display screens show the display screens as dark (i.e., contents of the screen are not visible). Regardless, users still wish to capture/image the contents of an ALM by scanning the ALM.